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Friday Night Flix: The Devil’s Rock

Welcome to Friday Night Flix, where there’s never a need to leave the couch or put on pants. Every week I’ll recommend an under-the-radar movie that’s currently available on one or more of the major streaming platforms. They won’t all be classics, but every one is guaranteed to be 100% watchable or your money back.

I know what you’re thinking but you’re wrong. The Devil’s Rock (free on Netflix, $2.99 on Amazon) is NOT about the dangers of smoking crack. It would have been a great name for a movie about demonic drugs but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Move past it.

The Devil’s Rock is the story of two Kiwi commandos in World War II who- Okay, let’s just stop for a moment. First off, was New Zealand even involved in WWII? Was it even a country then? Second, it had an army big enough to support specialized commando units? Were they made up of hobbits???

HA! That was a trick. You were probably thinking some of that stuff too, weren’t you? Well I’ll have you know the mighty New Zealand military declared war on Germany years before the U.S. got its sorry ass in gear. Over 200,000 New Zealand…ites served during WWII and 11,000 gave their lives. According to Wikipedia that’s 0.8% of their entire population. If America had the same casualty rates, we’d have lost over a million men.

Sorry about that. I felt obliged to get all history channel there because I myself laughed at the idea of Kiwi commandos sabotaging a Nazi fortress in the middle of the ocean. I scoffed at the obviously tight budget and the weird accents, including the head German officer, whose English sounds a wee bit too New Zealandy. And I double scoffed at an unheralded foreign horror movie trying to carve out a stake in the well explored territory of Nazi occultism. But Devil’s Rock manages to be a little scary, a little gory, and totally engaging. It’s certainly horror but it’s almost like a filmed stage play. The major draw is the tense relationship of the two main actors who, dialect quibbles aside, are really quite wonderful. And I adore the idea that iron is the only material that can restrain evil. Fuck silver man, that shit is IMPOSSIBLE to keep clean.

Added Bonuses: casual demonic nudity has me praying for a stateside remake just so there can eventually be a porn parody called The Devil’s Rack.